Ten great iPad guitar apps – part II

Missed part I? Read it here.

Got an iPad and a guitar? Then you’ll want to read our guide to ten of the best apps you can buy (or in some cases download for free). We won’t claim this is a definitive list of the ten bets apps for iPad toting guitar players, that would be silly. But they’re ten of our personal favourites. 

Guitar Jam Tracks

Price: $4.99 (£2.99)

Devleoper: Ninebuzz Software

Guitar Jam Tracks is designed to help you improve your lead and rhythm playing, rather than helping you learn a particular song. The starter pack comes with five tracks to play along with, each in a different style. You can buy more tracks as in-app purchases.

Scale charts show you exactly where to put your fingers, or, alternatively, you can choose to see the chords for the rhythm part. There are seven major and seven minor keys to choose from, and six scales, including the major and minor pentatonic and blues scales. It looks great too, meaning that as a practice tool, it’s hard to beat.

Guitar Toolkit

Price: $9.99 (£6.99)

Developer: Agile Partners

Guitar ToolKit pack almost everything you could want from  a guitar app into one package. There’s a tuner, of course, beautifully rendered. There’s a Scales tool which displays the neck of a guitar and allows you to tap on it to display the note on that string and fret, as well as everywhere else that note appears on the fretboard. You can then choose from one of dozens of scales from a variety of different types of music and display them in any key. The Arpeggios tool does the same for arpeggio patterns. The Chords tool shows you how to play any chord anywhere on the neck, and the Chord Sheets show you how chords work together in different scales. And the Metronome, well that could be an app on its own. In addition to timing beats and off-beats, there’s a whole array of drum patterns to choose from, allowing you to use it as a virtual drummer.

Jam Player

Price: $4.99 (£2.99)

Developer: Positive Grid

Jam Player is a simplified version of Capo. It allows you to import songs from your Music Library and then slow them down without changing their pitch, alter the pitch, or change the volume. If you don’t need Capo’s extra features, like the ability to loop sections, it’s a good buy.

TabToolkit

Price: $3.99 (£2.49)

Developer: Agile Partners

TabToolKit is a tab and musical notation viewer which allows you to both see and ‘hear’ the tablature in your collection. It supports Guitar Pro and Power Tab, as well as PDF and text. A built-in synthesiser allows you to hear how the notated music should sound as you play it. Multi-track support allows you to mute the part you’re learning while playing the other parts in the background, and fretboard and keyboard displays show you where to finger the notes.

Ultimate Guitar Tabs HD

Price: Free (in-app purchases required)

Developer: Ultimate Guitar

Ultimate Guitar Tabs HD is a tab database on your iPad. It currently has more than 600,000 songs available, including recent releases like Daft Punk’s Get Lucky. You can search for tabs by song name, or filter them by tab type, difficulty, or tuning. And when you find a song you want to learn to play, you can make it a Favourite so you can download it and view it offline. You can create playlists of songs you want to learn, and an auto-scroll feature moves down through the song as you pay along, at a speed you set. There’s also a chord dictionary in case you get stuck.

You’ll need to pay a subscription fee for access to the tabs, but at $7.99 (£5.49) for a year, or $19.99 (£13.99) for lifetime access, it’s very reasonable.